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September 29, 2010

Thinking backwards.

Right, left, right. I had to retrain my mind to think that way and it was a commanding every ounce of my attention. I told my friend Katie that I needed her to remind me at every corner.

I was driving on the opposite side of the road for the first time in my life and it. Was. S. C. A. R. Y.

Everything was backwards – the lights, the roads, the signs, the stick shift, the window button. I felt like I did the first time I drove on the open road after I got my license. It didn’t help that the roads in Malta essentially only had room for one car on the road, and opposing traffic would fly around the hilly corners at nerve-wracking speeds as we were driving along the seaside cliffs in Dingli. A nightmare? Maybe. Easy to manage? No. A thrill? Definitely.

As I rounded each of those turns and constantly remind myself to think backwards, my mind wandered to business and life. I realized that sometimes in life, although it may be unnatural or uncomfortable, we have to force ourselves to think backwards. I began to think about my business and how it is so easy to get focused on the shorts term tasks.

In the daily routine of life it is so easy for me to get caught up in the mundane and the normal that sometimes I lose sight of the big picture. The album that needs to be designed. The invoice that needs to be logged. The session that needs to be edited. The emails that need to be responded to. Although these things need to get done, I realized how important it was to force myself to take a step back every once in a while and switch my thought process. To think backwards. About my long term goals. About my dreams. About where I want to be in 1 year, 3 years and 5 years. About what I want the end result to be.

And on a small village road in Malta I came to the conclusion that although it may be a challenge, forcing myself to think backwards is something I need to do a little more often.